Memento Mori
by foggynite
Summary: [Blade 2] Minor movie spoilers, minor slash [Chupa+Priest]. Memento Mori: [L.] Lit., remember to die, i.e., that you must die; a warning to be prepared for death.


Memento Mori

by foggynite

Noisy crowd, pulsing beats, everything so confusing, so loud. Strobe lights blinding me. I elbow my way through the dancers.

A Reaper. Son of a bitch keeps running, no matter how many rounds we pump in him. I fire anyway. 

The rhythm of my machine gun drowns out the heavy bass behind me, thrumming in my arms, through my teeth until I clench my jaw painfully, canines biting into my lip.

There're screams over my ear-piece, familiar and terrifying and I'm running to him before I even realize where I'm going. A quick way to get killed.

Asad is down, stunned and sprawled in the middle of the corridor. I nearly trip over him, but think to drag him to his feet. White eyes in a dark face, and I'm running again. Running to an unfamiliar silence.

The next few moments are a blur, maybe Asad fired at it, maybe I did, but the Reaper's running away like the chickenshit it is. Running and leaving behind a bloody mess.

There are no guarantees in this life, undead or not.

I understand that. I understand that we formed a team to go after the Daywalker and we trained for two years, expecting to fight for our lives and eventually lose them, maybe. 

But he's bleeding all over, so much blood-copper-tang filling my nostrils and for once the aroma makes me ill. I remember rolling in that scent, in his musky sweet red, nipping and sucking and fucking. 

This isn't right. This is carnage we inflict, not receive, and the gaping wound on his neck is covered in this horrendous slime and I don't want to have this as my last memory of him. 

I'm yelling at Asad, shouting at Priest, nearly shrieking any words I can think of that would make him stay, and we're moving him to a cleared area. He's gasping, rolling his head like a puppet with cut strings as his back arches in pain, and all I can do is hold him down. 

Hold down the body I so recently lavished attention on, and try to realize that this is happening, this is real, and wish that maybe in a moment I'll wake up and find myself finally dead, and this is hell. That this isn't happening to him, and we'll be fine.

But this is what we signed on for, knowing this would happen one day and wishing it would be later, but knowing above all that this is it. 

So I hold him down, hand tight around his arm, body pressed to his shaking flesh in a macabre parody of what we share. Shared. He bucks beneath me, and I grab his hair desperately trying to keep him still, and a clump of it tears away, tangled in my gloves. He continues to writhe.

"_Kill me now, Chupa._"

His eyes are begging, and that isn't right because he never begs. And this is happening, and this is now, and I can't refuse him. I can't refuse the trust and faith in his eyes, can't deny the tears welling in mine. But they will not fall, because this is our reality.

I press my gun to his chest, right where his heart should be, and I can't watch as I pull the trigger. The kick reverberates up my arm, the shock absorbed by my elbow and tendons, and I don't want to look at the neat burnt holes in his shirt because I know what they mean.

He's still struggling, not ash and dust and firey bones. The body beneath me isn't him anymore, isn't him. So when the Daywalker orders me out of the way, I only hesitate a moment, but I realize.

This is our reality.

White light a mockery of everything holy, and his name was pure Priest, spitting on the heavens and the churches and the devout hypocrites, and my last memory of him will be of raw wounds and yellow slime and empty eyes as his lip slowly split in half. Full, dry lips, ghosting over me. Bright brown eyes with long lashes.

He's burning and the Daywalker is watching on impassive. He's just another dead vampire now. Another notch on a long tally, and nevermind that he would trim his beard over my toothbrush or steal my shirts and bring them home spattered in blood. Nevermind that he was from a long and noble line of pure bloods, fierce and arrogant and proud and a major jackass.

Suddenly I'm angry for everything that I've lost, burning hot hatred at the world that I will bring to its knees, because he wasn't perfect, wasn't a saint, but now I can never lose myself inside him again. Because now I truly have nothing left in this fight except my life, and even then I'll take as many of the fuckers with me as I can.

There's nothing left except a chunk of blood-matted hair snagged in the buckle of my glove. His ashes scatter, mere dust motes in the white-blue ray of light. Reinhardt catches my eye as we follow the Daywalker and his lackeys. 

My anger burns white hot bright in my chest.


End file.
